28-29 Morgan Arcade, Cardiff CF10 1AF
theplancafe.co.uk
This review is about one of my favourite coffee shops and cafe's, and is a must-visit if you are in Cardiff. Situated in the Morgan Arcade, it has nice surroundings and is in a lovely 125 year old, grade 2 listed building. This building feels a little vintage, and fits well with the arcade, which you have views of from inside. With two floors, there is plenty of seating, but still fills up quickly, being popular! (Also having some famous people visiting once in a while including Matt Smith as Dr Who, which was filmed here before!).
For the coffee - I have never had a bad one in this place. The barista's are all extremely well trained, and many have worked there for a long time. In addition to this, the head barista came fourth place in the UK barista championship in 2010, and is still the only welsh finalist. He is also an extremely friendly guy, having chatted to him a few times in the cafe, and via email. (Have also got some great coffee advice from him!). There are also tips for brewing coffee on his blog, which I will add a link to at the bottom. Every coffee I have drank here has had incredibly defined latte art on - All with great definition, quite a dark crema and almost perfect symmetry. They also have a board behind the counter telling you where the espresso originates as well as some tasting notes, with the beans being roasted locally.
The beans used are roasted by James' Gourmet Coffee Roasters, as well as guest beans (Links at the bottom). The roasters is situated in Ross-On-Wye in Herefordshire, and always send freshly roasted beans, making it able for the coffee shops to completely decide the freshness of the beans. The Plan was one of the first cafe's in Cardiff to sell artisan, third wave coffee's, including Flat White's, and have been since 2007 (so are very used to it!). The cafe use a great Astoria Plus4U espresso machine, and a modified Anfim Super Caimano grinder - both looking very impressive and give impressive results, helping the coffee taste even better. The beans used for espresso are normally Caffe Naturelle, complimented with seasonally changing blends or single origins.
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| View of the bar and coffee from upstairs |
In the summer, they also serve a great cold brew. This is brewed slowly overnight using a coarse grind, and cold water to extract as much flavour as possible, without any chance of burning the coffee or having flavour lost from the water cooling down. It is also a great way to lose the acidity. The cold brew I had was made with Finca La Falda filter profile beans from Columbia. This farm translates to "The Skirt Farm". They're grown and picked 1940m above sea level, and then undergo a washed process. This had a lovely lemon flavour, balanced equally with brown sugar and caramel, making it have a lovely sweet lemon flavour.
On top of this, The Plan has a great selection of food, from salads to crepes to burgers - all top quality and locally made! It also has a selection of Vegan foods (which I haven't tried but heard its good). Everything in this place is great quality, and featured in The Independant's top 50 coffee shops (deservingly and being one of the only cafe's). They also make a mean chocolate milkshake, one of the best I have had!
UPDATE
The other day, I went back here (as I was in Cardiff), so had a Columbian Cafetiere, to see how it compared to the cold brew. It has a nice touch, that it comes with a little egg timer to tell you when it has finished brewing, to get the best flavours. At first it had a cocoa base, with more of an acidic taste than the cold brew. After this, you could taste a nice sweet lemon flavour, balanced with a little caramel and brown sugar. This is definitely the best cafetiere I have tasted. and one of the best filter style coffee's - nice and sweet, but not too much so you can taste all of the flavours! Once again, a great coffee from the brew!
Few Links
http://thebeanvagrant.com/ - Trevor, The head barista's blog.
His twitter is also
@TheBeanVagrant.
@ThePlanCafe
http://jamesgourmetcoffee.com/ is the roasters website.
